Abstract

Game On is a collection of linked short stories that explore the lives of several inner-city youth of diverse backgrounds, growing up in Montreal. These characters’ misadventures are intertwined through their participation in a basketball team made up of students from various alternative schools around the city. The stories touch on topics affecting vulnerable teens, such as poverty, addiction, gang affiliation, violence, neglect and trauma. The most prominent themes arise from the travails of adolescence, such as coming to terms with absent or unreliable parental figures, establishing value systems around materialism and friendship, and developing a sense of humanism in a seemingly indifferent world. These ideas are explored through the unique affect of growing up as at-risk anglophone youth in Montreal—minority citizens both linguistically and often ethnically, caught up in the collateral ravages of Quebec’s cultural identity crisis. Above all, the stories promote the importance of having positive role models, establishing healthy community connections, and encouraging creative thinking as a means of survival.